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German Method of Preserving Fruit
Weisbaden is famous for its perfect preserves,--whole and well flavored, in syrup. A German housewife of repute insists that this recipe is the secret method so profitable to the firm. It results, at least, in a good imitation and good eating. Take 1 pound of sugar to each pound of cherries, strawberries, currants, plums, etc., any fruit, but cooked alone. Put the sugar with 1/2 as much water on the fire, make a thick syrup, put the fruit in it, and boil it but once. Pour into earthen plates, cover with sheets of glass and set in the hottest sun for 3 days, taking it in at night or covering with oilcloth. The natural heat draws out the flavor better than any stove, and the fruit keeps its shape perfectly. Put into jars and seal closely, for use. TUTTI-FRUTTI. (Italian way of preserving mixed fruits.) Italy is a country of confectionery. It was Italians, as princesses, marrying kings of France, who brought luxurious cooking, especially the making of sweets, to Paris. Before those days, France was barbarous. Take 1 pound each of strawberries, currants, huckleberries, cherries, peaches, plums, grapes, and pineapple, each in season, if not possible to get at once. Cut up and stone the large fruit. Add 1/2 pound of sugar to each 2 pounds of fruit and 1/2 pint of brandy. Put in layers, with only the sugar and brandy between. Good for ice creams. Do not cook it at all. Add some cooked chestnuts to it when using for ice cream, in proportion of 1/2 pint of mixed fruit to each quart of cream.
Two preserving methods printed together, both of which rely on assumptions about sugar, sun and sealing that modern food safety does not support. The notes below explain the terms and then why neither should be attempted as printed.
- Wiesbaden, not WeisbadenThe spa town in Hesse. The book's claim that the town is "famous for its perfect preserves" is its own; and the claim that a housewife knew a particular firm's "secret method" is the sort of thing sold with a recipe rather than proved.
- "Boil it but once"The hinge of the German method: the fruit is brought to a boil in heavy syrup a single time, so the pieces stay whole rather than collapsing. Everything after that is evaporation, not cooking, which is exactly where the method breaks down.
- Three days in open sun is the problemThree days of sun is the problem -- fruit sitting in shallow earthen plates under glass for three days, carried in and out, is held for many hours in the range where yeasts and moulds multiply. The glass sheets and the oilcloth limit but do not exclude insects and airborne spores. Sun-drying works for fruit taken to a genuinely low moisture content; syrupy half-set preserves never get there.
- "Seal closely" is not canningThe jars are filled with a product that has been open to the air for days and then simply closed. There is no sterilisation of jars, no hot pack, no measured processing time or temperature, and no way to know the finished sugar concentration after uncontrolled evaporation. Spoilage is mould and fermentation rather than botulism in high-acid fruit, but the method gives no control over either.
- The tutti-frutti is under-preservedHalf a pound of sugar to two pounds of fruit is about a quarter of the fruit's weight (a fifth of the finished mixture), well below the concentration at which sugar suppresses microbial growth. The brandy is written ambiguously: "1/2 pint" may be per 2 lb of fruit or for the whole crock, so the finished alcohol could be anywhere from a few per cent to about ten. Left uncooked and unrefrigerated, as the recipe intends, this is closer to a fermenting crock than a preserve.
- Raw fruit into ice creamThe mixture is stirred uncooked into cream at serving time. Nothing in the sequence brings the fruit to a temperature that would deal with contamination picked up during weeks of open standing.
- If you want the resultsWhole fruit in syrup and brandied mixed fruit both exist in current, tested form, with weighed sugar, measured acidity and specified processing. Use one of those.
- Reading the quantitiesFor reference only: if the book's pint is the American 16 fl oz, half a pint is 8 fl oz. "1/2 as much water" is not specified as weight or volume; read as weight it gives a syrup of roughly two parts sugar to one part water.
Wiesbaden's reputation for glace and syrup-packed fruit belonged to a nineteenth-century spa economy, and recipes claiming to reveal a famous firm's method turn up in the period's cookbooks — the author here is careful to call her version "a good imitation." Sun-preserving of this kind was genuine practice in hot, dry summers across southern Europe, and the belief that solar heat kept flavour and shape better than a stove was widely held before controlled oven temperatures were available. The aside attached to the tutti-frutti — that Italian princesses marrying into the French royal house brought sweets and civilised cooking to a "barbarous" France — is the Catherine de' Medici story, repeated constantly in Victorian and Edwardian food writing and generally treated by food historians now as legend rather than documented fact; French confectionery and Italian confectionery developed alongside each other. The name tutti frutti simply means "all fruits," and the layered crock of whatever ripens in succession, topped up with spirit, invites comparison with the German Rumtopf.